Two Sides of the Same Coin
by Julia451
Summary: One-shot. Ivy doesn't take it well when everyone begins comparing her to Carmen Sandiego. She's nothing like that criminal! It would be terrible if she were... wouldn't it...?


It started the day they caught Sara Bellum trying to steal the mini Statue of Liberty out of the Seine River. She made it back to the city before they managed to bring her hovercraft down next to the Eiffel Tower. Ivy bailed out of the chopper after her, and the two gave the tourists above and below quite a show as the young detective chased her up and down and around the sides of the tower. It wasn't long before the agile Ivy had the crook in one arm and the helicopter's ladder in the other, and they were lowered to the ground into a swarm of flashing cameras.

Zack jumped out of the chopper first. "Great catch!" he said, slapping his sister a high five.

Josha was right behind him. "Ivy, that was amazing! I've never seen you move like that!"

"I've been practicing," Ivy said nonchalantly as she handcuffed Sara.

"I can tell," Josha went on with the same ardor. "The way you jumped and flew through the air... you looked just like Carmen Sandiego!"

Ivy froze for a second, but that second was all it took for Josha to realize what he'd said and the admiration in his eyes to give way to embarrassment. Ivy quickly smiled at him, laughed, and said, "Don't let Carmen hear you say that," and they never mentioned it again.

Nobody mentioned anything like it again until they received a clue from Carmen a month later after she stole the robe worn by Charlton Heston in _The Ten Commandments_ and the snow globe held by Orson Welles in _Citizen Kane_. It was Ivy who deduced that Carmen writing they would never find her because "nobody could find the spider pit" didn't mean she was hiding somewhere that could be called a "spider pit" but that she was going after the missing spider pit footage from _King Kong_.

"Brilliant, Ivy!" the chief exclaimed. "You really know how to think like Carmen!"

"Uh, thanks, chief," Ivy said awkwardly, but the moment passed without anyone else commenting on it.

It was two more months before it happened again in Cincinnati. A traveling Viking exhibit, including an actual Viking ship (well, as much of it as had been found, anyway), was going on display in the local museum, which had received a cryptic phone call that led them to worry a certain history buff was more interested in it than they would prefer. That wasn't Carmen's style, but they had to check it out anyway, despite Zack and Ivy firmly believing they'd get word of a heist in China or New Zealand while they were there.

Local law enforcement, however, seemed to have no such suspicions; they were relieved to have the backup of ACME's finest. The officer who shook Ivy's hand seemed particularly impressed, ending his greeting by saying, "We've heard a lot about you. It's an honor to meet the Carmen Sandiego of ACME."

Ivy jerked her hand out of his. "Excuse me?"

"W-well, I... I just meant, um..."

"There's only been one Carmen Sandiego at ACME, and she walked out long ago," Ivy said stiffly. She walked away just as stiffly.

"I don't think that's what he meant, Ivy..." Zack said timidly as he caught up with her.

Ivy sighed, already feeling guilty. "I know." Didn't mean she liked it.

Carmen's next big heist – stealing single towers, turrets, or battlements from castles around the world and putting them together to make one whole castle – culminated in stealing a tower from Strawberry Hill, home of the father of Gothic literature Horace Walpole, on the upper Thames. ACME agents from every city she'd hit on this project converged on the site.

Without planning on it, Ivy found herself giving directions and orders over the radio as they chased the thief through the labyrinthine halls of the mansion. Daniel, an excessively smug new recruit from America, didn't appreciate it, and kept telling her to back off. When Ivy told him to join the group forming outside the main entrance to cut that off as an escape, he snapped at her, "Who do you think we are, your henchmen? Get your eyes checked, Carmen!" Fortunately, that made Ivy angry enough to give her the burst of speed necessary to reach Carmen in time to stop her from hooking the tower up to her machine.

Ivy was sure the Strawberry Hill incident was what did it; every agent connected to the radio at the time heard it. She wasn't surprised at what happened the day she, Zack, and Olivia (a detective they'd never met before) ended up chasing Carmen through the narrow streets of Pittsburgh (the Duquesne Incline still on its track, but not from lack of trying to snatch it up). Olivia seemed to think that, as they were in her territory, she ought to call all the shots, but it quickly became clear she wasn't cut out for dealing with Carmen the way Zack and Ivy were. She and Ivy almost came to blows over how to interpret a clue involving pictures of Scrooge McDuck, a butterfly, and a _diplodocus_.

It was Ivy's conclusion that led to them cornering Carmen at the Carnegie Library and chasing through the small yard of trees out front. Olivia managed to tackle her as she darted out from behind a tree, only to rip the hat off and find Sara Bellum. When the real Carmen bolted from a behind another tree a few feet behind, Ivy cut her off.

Carmen merely grinned at the failure of their switch. "What gave us away?"

"You've never let a foot chase go on that long," Ivy replied, grinning back.

"Where'd the fun be in that?" Ivy leaped towards her in the same instant Carmen deployed her jetpack and had one handcuff around her right wrist before the thief said, "Impressive, Holmes... but not impressive enough." Carmen reached for her right hand, Ivy pulled it back, and then felt someone pull the key from that hand from behind – Sara had escaped. Ivy dived at Carmen again, but the two criminals were easily able to free her and take off.

"You ok, Ivy?" Zack asked her as he rushed to help her up.

"Could be worse," Ivy told him as she held up the stolen book she'd taken from Carmen's coat.

"Congratulations," an annoyed Olivia grumbled as she joined them. "It's true – you really are just like Carmen."

Ivy glared at her but didn't raise her voice as she said, "I am _nothing_ like Carmen Sandiego."

"You're right – you're _everything_ like her," was Olivia's version of a comeback as she threw up her arms and walked away.

From then on, it attained the status of an old family joke at ACME. Every party, every meeting, every briefing, every training session, whenever some detective would bring up Carmen's latest frustrating escape and wonder what she was up to now, someone else would always observe, "Ask Ivy – she knows how her mind works."

Ivy once said a robbery at the Library of Congress was beneath Carmen (she would have taken the whole library); the agent who had received the report accepted this with a shrug and said, "Well, guess you would know."

Ivy brought down two of Carmen's henchmen at once at Stonehenge; the local agent who took them from her said, "Wow, never seen anybody wrangle 'em like that except Carmen."

Ivy was the only detective to snowboard after Carmen down the side of the snow-covered Great Pyramid (don't ask) without wiping out; as Ivy picked up the necklace Carmen had dropped before escaping after Ivy tripped her up, she distinctly heard everyone approaching behind her saying, "Did you see that...? Wow, she's good... Yeah, just like Carmen..."

By following Ivy's directions, an ACME task force was able to stop Carmen from making off with the Soap Lady from the Mütter Museum; when she began to send them out to try to find where the fugitive had run, one of them mumbled, "Whatever you say, Carmen."

Ivy snapped at an uncooperative teammate, "How could you let her get away?!" He rolled his eyes at her and answered, "She surprised me. Not all of us can predict her every move like you."

Ivy grabbed a stick and began drawing in the dirt how they could sneak into Carmen's base and steal the plane back without being spotted; when she was done, the first thing she heard was, "You're better at this than Carmen."

Ivy got stuck fighting Carmen's lackey on the dock while his leader sped away on a jetfoil; when Ivy finally had him cuffed, he gasped, "Wow, you really are as good as Carmen."

A tourist in Rome was astounded at the way Ivy seemed to effortlessly interpret the clues she found throughout the city, snapping photos and saying, "It's like watching Carmen Sandiego herself in action!"

"Who do you think you are? Carmen Sandiego?"

"Where'd you learn that move? Carmen Sandiego?"

"We need you on this – you're the only one who's as good as Carmen."

"Carmen Sandiego herself couldn't have done it better."

Although Ivy tried to keep her temper under control, just the right/wrong combination of the speaker's tone, the time of day, the length of time spent on the current case, and the extent of the soreness of her muscles could make her snap, "I am NOT Carmen Sandiego! I am nothing like Carmen Sandiego!" The speaker would then either a) not reply at all but with an expression that clearly said her statement did nothing to convince them; b) shrug and say, "I was just joking"; c) roll their eyes and say, "Whatever you say"; or d) fold their arms and say, "Oh, please all you're missing is the hat and trench coat," usually causing Zack to laugh, which would lead to questions that led to him telling the story of that one Halloween.

One night as they returned to headquarters, Ivy finally asked Zack, "How can they say that? Do they think I'm gonna turn into an egomaniacal kleptomaniac with an addiction to high-risk stunts and a fetish for trench coats? I'm not like that, am I?"

"Like _that_? No," Zack said truthfully.

"Of course not. They're all crazy." Zack pulled at this collar and cleared his throat. "What?"

"Nothing!"

Ivy stepped in front of him to better aim her glare right at his face. "What?"

Zack tried to look everywhere but at her. "Well, you've gotta admit, you've chased Carmen more than any detective on the planet... you probably know her better than anyone else around here..."

"What, like how she thinks? How her mind works? I have to! How else am I supposed to catch her?"

"Exactly," Zack agreed. "You know how to think like her, that's all."

"I may know how, but I _don't_ think like her," Ivy insisted. "She's a thief, a villain, a crook."

The chief finally popped up on the screen behind them. "Oh, come on, Ivy, she's a lot more than that."

"I know she was your friend, chief," Ivy tried to say gently, "but not anymore. She's a criminal, and it's my duty to bring her down. And unlike her, _I_ won't forget that. I don't care what tricks she pulls or how fast she is or how crazy her schemes are – she can't get away from me forever!" The chief gave her a weird look but said nothing. "What is it?"

"You won't like it," the chief answered sheepishly, "but... you sounded just like... you-know-who when you said that."

"There's a big difference between wanting to catch a thief and wanting to steal Big Ben," Ivy pointed out.

"Of course," said the chief. "Catching Carmen Sandiego is _WAY_ more of a challenge than stealing anything she could possibly steal."

Zack crossed his arms and asked her, "But that's what makes it fun, right, Ivy?"

Ivy blurted out, "Yes... I mean, no! I mean... never! I'll never be a crook like her!"

"Of course not," the chief agreed, "but there's more to Carmen Sandiego than just being a thief."

"Not anymore," Ivy repeated. "A criminal's a criminal, no matter how smart or talented she thinks she is."

She left to seek solace from Josha, who was in headquarters that weekend working on another project. He didn't argue with her, but he couldn't hide his surprise that she thought there was anything to argue about. "I always thought you admired Carmen Sandiego..." he said bemusedly.

"I..." Ivy couldn't deny it. "I do."

It was true. As paradoxical as it was, Ivy had always thought highly of their most wanted fugitive. Carmen was different than other criminals. It wasn't just the fact that she always gave back what she stole or never hurt anyone, doing no real harm; it was her sincerity. She was no hypocrite; she truly did steal the most difficult things imaginable because only that gave her the mental challenge she craved. It was no act. She didn't steal for profit or revenge or a pathological need to prove her power or superiority over others (nothing could have been farther beneath Carmen Sandiego than comparing herself to others); she did it for the same reason Sherlock Holmes solved crimes – she needed the stimulation, the action, the excitement, the thrill of the chase. It was tragic that she'd resort to such an ignoble method to find it, but... that was just it. It felt more tragic than evil...

But it shouldn't. Her reasons for her crimes didn't matter – they were still wrong, and no admiration or sympathy or gratitude that Ivy had ever felt for her was strong enough to make Ivy forget her duty to bring Carmen down. One thing Ivy had _never_ felt for Carmen was a willingness to let her go. To keep her old orphanage, maybe, but not to let her keep her freedom permanently. Even thinking Carmen was actually dead for a few days did not nothing to dampen Ivy's resolve to catch her when she turned up alive; the detective had resumed the hunt with as much passion and determination as ever. Going easy on Carmen had never once entered her mind... Carmen would have been disgusted if it had...

Didn't the fact that Ivy worked harder than anyone to stop Carmen and came closer than anyone to catching her prove Ivy would never end up like her? She certainly never felt tempted to turn to a life of crime. Why would she? Ivy never felt like she needed a stronger challenge... she got all the challenge she needed chasing Carmen...

"I'll never be like her!" Ivy almost screamed out loud.

Josha put his hand on her shoulder and said gently, "No one is saying you will become a criminal, Ivy – just that... you're just as strong as she is. You're the only one who's a match for her."

Had working so hard to catch Carmen and the mental and physical training it gave her really made Ivy more like her? The thought no longer angered her; it terrified her.

Or it did until a battle with Carmen on top of the Empire State Building after a failed attempt to steal the statue of Atlas. Carmen had lost her jetpack in the fight ten stories below, her henchmen had already been caught, and there was no escape vehicle in sight. Ivy knew better than to drop her guard, but she calculated Carmen's chances of escape here much less than her chances of being caught.

She couldn't tell if Carmen thought the same, as the thief smiled at her as confidently as she always did. "Nice work, detective. I can't believe I let you chase me up here."

"Wasn't that hard – you can't resist standing atop the tallest point in any city."

"One of my few weaknesses but one no one's ever noticed before. Of course, they don't think like us."

"I'm _not_ like you," Ivy said coldly.

"It almost sounds like you think being like me is degrading." With that, Carmen stamped her foot on the roof, and the surface directly beneath her rose up, flames shooting out of the back of the hoverboard that had been concealed right underneath where she'd been standing. Ivy sprinted towards her, but Carmen had already risen above her head. "Another noble battle, my worthy adversary. As they always are... and ends as they always do."

Ivy had perfectly calculated the direction she was poised to move in, and when she finished gloating, the detective backflipped up into her path at the exact right time to land on the board.

Carmen's grin only widened as the two women struggled in mid-air. "I knew you wouldn't disappoint me," she said with her signature mixture of cockiness and flattery. "Just what I would have done." The comment rattled Ivy enough to give Carmen the upper hand and enable her to send the younger woman somersaulting the short drop back to the roof. She landed on her feet, unharmed, but with no way to reach her hovering opponent. Before she took off, she said, "But you have a long way to go to be like me someday... if you ever want to catch me."

The first thought that went through Ivy's mind was, _I'll show you!_ She refused to let the idea bother her again, pushing it out of her mind where it couldn't mess up her game. She succeeded until she and Zack captured Lee Jordan after his fourth escape from ACME's prison.

"You again?!" Jordan whined as she tied him to a streetlight, the better to wait until the other agents arrived to transport back where he came from. "Why does it always have to be you?"

"Because we always catch you," Ivy replied.

"True," the prisoner observed, his grin deepening and becoming even slimier. "Only Detective Ivy captures criminals the way Carmen Sandiego captures national monuments."

Ivy shot back, "Don't flatter yourself – this is about as challenging as stealing candy from a baby." Thinking it would infuriate him, she added, "After all, you're no Carmen Sandiego."

His smarmy grin didn't change. "Of course not – that's your department." Ivy refused to take the bait, so he went on: "Must hurt, knowing you'll end up an ACME washout like that coward playing dress up someday."

The idea of someone insulting Carmen Sandiego was so ludicrous that it stopped Ivy's rage from hitting her all at once. "What are you talking about?" she asked, half-wondering if she'd heard him right."

"That chicken who gives up and runs whenever things get tough." Lee paused only to laugh. "She's gotta be the only 'thief' who ever got famous for _never_ pulling off a theft. Can you even call someone a thief who's never stolen anything? Hah, ants that steal your crumbs at a picnic are worse public enemies than she is. You may have caught me tonight, but I've caught _WAY_ more goods than that cowgirl's ever got away with."

He was absolutely right... and Ivy didn't give Jordan a single hint of what his words had made her realize, that they'd all but obliterated all her instinctive moral objections to Carmen Sandiego's criminal lifestyle. It wasn't hard, given that her relief at the realization was drowned out by her fury at the rest of his words. How dare he insult Carmen Sandiego!

"Carmen Sandiego was twice the detective you ever were," Ivy said icily, "and ten times the thief you could ever hope to be."

"You would know. Hmm, where have I seen that look before..." Jordan seemed to be studying her face. "Oh, right, I remember. Wow, it's true – you are just like her."

Ivy now did something she'd never done before upon hearing that: she grinned and asked innocently, "When you say I'm just like Carmen Sandiego, do you mean that I'm beautiful, refined, clever, agile, fast, strong, determined, brilliant, confident, unstoppable, unbeatable, that I always get what I want... or all of the above?" Lee stared at her wide-eyed, helpless to come up with a reply. If he'd heard what affect that accusation usually had on her, his confusion was understandable. Ivy was honestly just as dumbfounded as he was – now that she had a real criminal in front of her to compare her to, she couldn't comprehend how she ever could have been ashamed of being like Carmen Sandiego.

"You look happy tonight," Zack observed after Jordan was safely loaded into ACME's paddy wagon.

"I am," Ivy confirmed.

"Because we caught Jordan?"

"What's so special about that? No, because even he's noticed how much I'm like Carmen Sandiego."

"That's a... good thing?"

"It is, little bro." Tonight, Ivy's admiration of Carmen was a strong as ever, and her disgust for the former detective's new hobby had never been so weak. The result was Ivy saying, "After all, what woman wouldn't consider it an honor to be compared to Carmen Sandiego?"


End file.
